[2585] "Well! I think I'm real!"

[Gemminie]

In the previous page Loup/Jerrek seems to have quit listening to Lana, but she continued to talk, so we don't know where Lana's skipping off to here. Perhaps they're going to dig for more CPUs. But Lana is skipping; this appears to be another mannerism she picked up on from watching humans and reading books. But what's this? They've encountered some tree people!

Evidently the tree people have noticed the New People's digging activities. What, by the way, are these tree people doing here, in the ruins at this particular moment? Are they here specifically to check out the New People? Or are they here for some other reason?

Lana puts on her best anime ^_^ face and says oopsie, you caught us! Meanwhile, L/J back there is completely deadpan, letting Lana take the lead here.

They think Lana's strange looking, especially her eyes. Well, they're not entirely wrong about that. And another one asks whether she's real. I think he means that she may not be a human but rather some sort of construct. The tree people are closer to the Ether and may be able to see into it, to at least some degree, and in the Ether the New People may look quite different from humans.

Lana's reply is that she believes herself to be real, in the sense of existing and not being an illusion, dream, etc. They're surrounded by teenage tree people here, yet Lana stays positive and smiley, despite the resonance this gives us readers with the last time Zimmy was surrounded by teenage tree people. They seem a bit close for comfort. However, their attitude doesn't seem hostile but rather curious. And then there's that last frame, when we focus on L/J. He's looking off to the side. Whom or what is he looking at? From the angle, he could merely be looking at Lana, as he's looking in the same direction as that tree person in the foreground, who is probably also looking at Lana. But he also looks somewhat surprised, so perhaps not. Has someone else arrived? I might suspect that Zimmy and/or Gamma have shown up, except that I'd think the tree people would also be reacting to their arrival, and they aren't. Is he suspecting that these tree people (which all seem to be boys) are going to attack Lana?

[pyradonis]

Feb 15, 2022 18:18:12 GMT mturtle7 said:

Tony was able to make his whole house bug-free, and even Jack, a teenage student, was able to evade the Shadow Men for weeks. And not only is Juliette intimately familiar with the surveillance tech the Shadow Men use, she can actually mess around within their system, so even if stuff does pick up the New People's operation she can just delete the records.

Probably the most impressive thing we've seen the Court do in terms of intelligence gathering was to track down Tony in the middle of nowhere...but then again, conducting a months-long operation to find a single former employee who's gotten himself in a bad way is very different from passively picking up some unusual activity you weren't looking for, would never expect, and wouldn't actually understand even if you did notice it happening. Plus, I'd imagine that any per-existing surveillance they had in that region would have been pretty damn messed up by Loup's earthen flood, and with everything going on with Aata, the Headmaster, the plan to move, etc., there's no way they had the time or interest necessary to restore it.

Tony is implied to be close to genius-level of intelligence, and even then - he only believed to have gotten rid of all the surveillance, but in the same conversation he admitted he had been wrong about his belief in being able to escape the Court's eye before. And even if Tony knew of every single means of surveillance the Court employed when he had left it, can he be sure they didn't improve them or introduce new ones in the fifteen years before they dragged him back? Remember when Kat tried to use her father's electro-disruptor and the robots turned out to be unaffected.
Jack had enhanced skills and intelligence at this time due to being possessed by Whitelegs. Yes, he obviously was able to evade the Shadow Men, but the method he employed in order to do so would have killed him had he continued it for long. He later made the anti-bugs which enable the user to let their signal appear in a different location thanks to some knowledge he had retained from the possession, but as we remember, the one time we saw the things in use the Court still knew where the kids were.

I agree that these are unusual times for the Court and they certainly have very different priorities than they had a mere year ago (and, like drmemory said, the Shadow Men in particular are probably very busy with reorganizing themselves and a hundred little intrigues). But as I said, the NP's operation is huge and even the elf kids are partly aware of what's going on, so I absolutely cannot believe no one in the Court is. Add to that that the Court is particularly interested in Kat and her work, and definitely want her to come when they leave, so I wouldn't be TOO surprised if there were more pairs of eyes on her than just Juliette's? Or that there are at least some Shadow Men aware that Juliette has more or less betrayed them.

Anyway, I find it more likely the Court just doesn't care about the robots any more. That they just plan to cut their losses and leave together with the overridden robot chassis, which should be much more to the Court's taste anyway, fully programmable and with no free will.

[davidm]

What if Lana is Coyote, he transferred from forest to court like Red after dying, or splitting like Annie or some other trick
... And was waiting for loup in same way he waited to destroy tick tock.

[warrl]

Feb 15, 2022 23:05:44 GMT pyradonis said:

like drmemory said, the Shadow Men in particular are probably very busy with reorganizing themselves and a hundred little intrigues). But as I said, the NP's operation is huge and even the elf kids are partly aware of what's going on, so I absolutely cannot believe no one in the Court is.

But... is this the best time to bring to your boss's attention some new data that the boss doesn't want to hear and that will district them from the critical task of elevating and consolidating their position in the new hierarchy?

[crater]

kat, or as they called her 20000 years later, the demiurge